About the Alliance

Resilient communications, built by neighbors.

S.I.E.R.R.A — the Signal Integrity & Emergency Radio Response Alliance — is an all-volunteer non-profit that builds, operates, and trains the people behind an off-grid emergency communications network for the Calaveras & Tuolumne foothills.

Our Story

Founded for the next emergency.

S.I.E.R.R.A grew out of the Ebbett’s Pass Radio Safety Network, the volunteer radio service founder Jay Goldberg operates along the Highway 4 corridor. When a GMRS repeater he built proved vital to the rescues of multiple people in a major 2026 snowstorm, the case for something larger was clear — an off-grid hub coordinating emergency communications between public safety agencies and residents. Established in 2026 as an all-volunteer non-profit, the alliance brings together radio operators, public-safety veterans, and engineers to build that network for the Calaveras & Tuolumne foothills — and to train the people who keep it running.

LoRa · MeshCore

The mesh, and what the map means.

Solar-powered LoRa relays that pass short text and telemetry across the foothills when power and cellular service are down. The map on the Mesh page draws what the network has actually been heard doing: every S.I.E.R.R.A repeater along the Ebbetts Pass corridor, and every relay link we observed between them.

Open the mesh status board

What a link on the map means.: A link means we heard two repeaters relay for each other, weighted by how often and how recently. How recently one was heard sets how bright and heavy it is, and how fast it pulses. Links between corridor repeaters heard in the last 30 days are always drawn.
What it does not mean.: It is not a routing table, and a faint link is not a link that is down — a backbone repeater can advert only twice a day and still be working. Nothing there is a guarantee of coverage at any given address, and it is never an all-clear.
The wider mesh.: Hollow markers are neighbouring MeshCore repeaters run by other operators — the one-hop neighbours our corridor nodes were heard relaying with. They are drawn faintly because they are context, not our infrastructure. The links out to them stay hidden until you select a repeater; all of them at once buried the corridor.
What the monitors cover.: Some of our repeater sites carry a monitor that reports battery, enclosure temperature and packet counters back to The Grid. The rest read "Limited Telemetry" — we hear them relaying, we just have nothing from the site itself. That is a gap in what we watch, not a judgement on the repeater: several of them are among the busiest in the corridor. Where a charge is shown it is usually estimated from voltage rather than read from a gauge, and the page says so.

MeshCore community map

Leadership

The volunteers behind the network.

S.I.E.R.R.A is governed by a volunteer board of directors, supported by technical advisors.

Board of Directors

Jay L. Goldberg, J.D.

Founder & President · KB6ENY

Jay spent 20+ years as Chief Operating Officer of a computer security consulting firm in San Francisco, completed a law enforcement career with retirement from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, and serves actively with the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department Search and Rescue team. A licensed ham radio operator, he operates the Ebbett’s Pass Radio Safety Network and founded S.I.E.R.R.A to ensure timely, meaningful emergency communications between public safety agencies and residents.

Read Jay’s full profile

Corrinne Goldberg

Treasurer

Corrinne brings more than 25 years of financial, operational, and organizational leadership to the alliance. Controller for a major IT consulting firm and previously Director of Operations for a medical-legal firm serving San Francisco and Oakland, she oversees S.I.E.R.R.A’s fiscal stewardship and financial integrity.

Read Corrinne’s full profile

Allan Claghorn

Secretary · KJ6ERL

Allan is a veteran software engineer with 28 years of experience who has spent years designing and operating emergency communication infrastructure — FM repeaters, Wi-Fi and microwave networks, and data communication servers. He focuses on the mesh systems that keep communities connected when conventional infrastructure fails.

Read Allan’s full profile

Advisors

Dan Pupius

Technology Advisor · K1PUP

Dan is responsible for the network’s web presence and live data feeds. A licensed amateur radio operator and San Francisco NERT member, he spent two decades as an engineering leader at Google, Medium, and his own startups — and once ran base camp operations for jungle research expeditions.

Read Dan’s full profile